WATCH: "Professor Occupy" Lisa Fithian, Caught On Camera Coaching Columbia Protestors, Explains Her Strategies
WATCH: "Professor Occupy" Lisa Fithian, Caught On Camera Coaching Columbia Protestors, Explains Her Strategies
The Ends Justify The Means: The "nation's best-known protesting consultant" was in the middle of the Columbia University occupation. Here is how she operates against her opponents.
By Peter List, Editor | May 1, 2024
To anyone who has watched various protests over the years, including the Occupy Wall Street movement, Lisa Fithian is a familiar name.
Having helped unions like the SEIU during the Occupy movement, as well as her involvement in 1999’s World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Ms. Fithian has been troublemaking for the Left for nearly half a century.
“Call her Professor Occupy,” Mother Jones’ Josh Harkinson wrote over a decade ago. “With somewhere between 80 and 100 arrests under her belt (she’s lost count) over nearly four decades of rabble-rousing, Fithian may be the nation’s best-known protest consultant.”
Earlier this week, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, when a group of pro-Palestinian protestors broke in, vandalized and occupied Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall in New York City, 63-year-old Lisa Fithian was right in the middle of it, lending credence to Mayor Eric Adams’ and others’ claims that “outside agitators” are among those disrupting school life on universities across the nation.
“Ms. Fithian said she came to Columbia on Monday afternoon to conduct a training session with about 30 students activists focused on safety and the general logistics of a protest,” reported the New York Times on Wednesday.
For those unfamiliar with Ms. Fithian and her tactics, in a lengthy video, recorded in 2020 to promote her book "Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance," Fithian explains her philosophy of resistance, as well as her tactics.
The ‘Edge of Chaos’
While the entire video is well worth watching, here is Ms. Fithian explaining “complexity science” and the “edge of chaos” and how she incorporates it into her work (at 15:30):
“We have to be willing to create a crisis. We have to be willing to engage in social disruption, create crisis for the people in power.”
Transactional vs. Transitional Change and Labor Unions
In this segment, Ms. Fithian explains the difference between transactional change versus transactional change and how she and labor unions shut large cities down.
’This is kind of like a war….I believe you you have to be willing to put them out of business.’
In this segment, Ms. Fithian explains tactics on waging war on her opponents.
“We have to disrupt their world.”
On Monday, as they moved into Colombia’s Hamilton Hall, protesters were seen carrying a table, while in the background, Ms Fithian could be heard saying: “I can’t help with that. You guys can help with that.”
Though Fithian was not among the arrested Tuesday, the protestors had followed Professor Occupy’s instructions well.